Assistant Editor

Hannah Mead is a former assistant editor for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, having worked there from July 2009 through August 2011. Before this, she worked twice as a summer intern for the Center's communications department.

Mead holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from Hillsdale College, having graduated summa cum laude with departmental honors. In her senior year, she received the economics department's Adam Smith Award for academic achievement, and she was selected to present a paper on constitutional political economy at the 2009 conference of the Association of Private Enterprise Education in Guatemala City.

Some actions that are not — and should not be — illegal are nonetheless reprehensible. Civil society plays a key role in these instances to foster good behavior. In the case of Pittsburgh Steelers' quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, who was accused of sexual assault last month, the NFL is correctly enforcing social norms outside of the legal system. … more

Flags are everywhere at the Olympics, but the games are not about international strife. There, patriotism trumps nationalism, and performance eclipses politics. The Olympics highlight the fact that individuals, not governments, make countries great. … more

Many photographers have given us startling images of the effects of the swift, mass emigration of businesses and residents from Detroit. Time Magazine and others find the rubble morbidly fascinating and eerily artsy, but for Detroit residents, the reality is anything but charming. Entire neighborhoods are crumbling, and the city struggles to address that spreading disease: blight. … more

A Detroit News headline today claims that "lax home-school laws" are to blame for a young girl's death by parental neglect. This was indeed a tragic event, and people are right to seek ways to prevent such abuse. Putting heavier regulations on homeschoolers, however, would not solve the problem of abuse.
Homeschooling gives parents the opportunity to keep their children out of dangerous schools and give them an excellent education. Curtailing this right would threaten these children's safety and ability to succeed. Furthermore, blindly trusting that children are kept safe in public schools can only allow more peer and parental abuse. … more

The Detroit Free Press reports that Gov. Jennifer Granholm is calling for legal action to block the shipping route between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River in an attempt to prevent an invasive carp species from entering the Great Lakes system.
An article from the Mackinac Center's MichiganScience magazine provides a solid background of the issues surrounding the Asian carp's migration toward the Great Lakes. … more

Only in America can researchers lament the availability of inexpensive food. Instead of appreciating how amazing it is that America's poorest are too fat, a recent paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research hints that minimum wages should be raised to take away Americans' access to abundant, cheap food. … more